Stakes High When Canker Case Goes To State's Highest Court

With the Florida Supreme Court back on the bench after a monthlong summer recess, the battle over the citrus canker eradication campaign is about to resume.

Millions of public tax dollars and the future of pest eradication campaigns are at stake.

Nursery owners and citrus growers who lost millions of young trees torched by the state in the controversial 1984 campaign to halt the spread of canker have received about $16 million as partial compensation. They are suing for millions more, and state officials fear the awards could top $200 million in a worst-case scenario.

Lawyers for both sides are gearing up for any contingency, from a climactic final battle before the state's highest court to multiple skirmishes in lower courts throughout the state.

The issue before the court is whether the state's canker compensation law, enacted by the Florida Legislature last spring, is constitutional.

The law takes the unprecedented step of freezing 67 lawsuits in various states of litigation and requiring the plaintiffs to enter an administrative settlement program.

''All the briefs have been filed. We're just waiting for them to set oral arguments or issue an opinion,'' said Jonathan Glogau, a state assistant attorney general.

Here are some of the possible scenarios, according to lawyers on both sides of the debate:

- The Supreme Court could rule that the law is constitutional. The pending canker lawsuits would be dis

missed. Plaintiffs would enter the administrative settlement program, negotiate a settlement with an administrative hearing officer or appeal the officer's decision to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. It would hold down legal costs and awards to a total of $30 million, the amount the Legislature has allocated for the two-year program, with taxpayers picking up two-thirds of the bill and the citrus industry paying one-third.

- Justices could deem the law unconstitutional in one or more respects. ''In that case, we would have to see if the law was gutted to the point that it wouldn't be workable,'' Glogau said. Lawyers for the state are divided over the chances that the law will be overturned.

Glogau and others on the attorney general's staff said they believe the law will be upheld because it provides for a judicial remedy - an appeal to the appellate court - if the administrative settlement fails. Mallory Horne, representing the Agriculture Department in the lower court cases, said he is less confident, because the law attempts to break new ground by actually freezing ongoing cases in various stages of litigation.

If the law is overturned, individual lawsuits would proceed in state court, many of them to the trial phase. The Legislature could attempt to remedy defects in the compensation claims program, but that possibility is seen as remote, even by lawyers representing the state.

- If the law is deemed unconstitutional, two other canker cases already before the Supreme Court on appeal could settle the issue over the amount of damages involved. The high court already has ruled that the state must pay ''full and just'' compensation for the legal ''taking'' of the destroyed citrus trees, which were burned to halt the spread of the disease. But the question of what constitutes full and just compensation has not been settled.

Most of the plaintiffs received partial compensation and signed documents saying they would not sue for more. The state and federal governments combined paid $16 million for the trees. But in a worst-case scenario, the state has estimated that court judgments to fulfill the ''full and just'' compensation demand could exceed $200 million.

For example, most of the nearly 20 million trees that were burned were merely inches tall, in plastic trays in nurseries. But the courts might rule that the nursery owners are entitled to payment for what the trees would have been worth a year or more later when they were ready for sale.

- If the high court clarifies the issue of compensation, then negotiated settlements could be possible for some or all of the remaining cases.

- If the cases still must be tried individually, the issue of the validity of signed releases absolving the state from further liability could become a larger issue. Most of the property owners signed statements, primarily in 1984 and 1985, when they accepted partial compensation for their trees, swearing they would not sue or hold the state liable for further damages. The release has been ruled invalid in at least one lower court case.

- Should the validity of the release become an issue, the murky scientific debate over the name of the disease that plagued the citrus nurseries could take on more significance. The argument that might be made is that at the time some of the releases were signed, authorities already knew the threat was not serious.